ABOUT ELSA
Working with perception, cognition, and felt sense to reveal the deeper layers at play, allowing us to engage complexity without reducing it.
MY STORY
From a young age I sensed there was more going on than met my eyes.
I was fixated on the subtle, unexpected shifts that reveal there is more to our existence—how someone could go from feeling completely stuck, flat, and unsure of how to proceed to experiencing a sudden flash of insight, noticing how their energy would increase and their face would light up.
I could step out onto the street, or into the garden holding a question in my mind and how after walking around and immersing myself in the space around me an answer would arise - almost as though it found me. Later in life I was trained to explore these events, to peel back the layers and reveal more of what’s actually occurring in these times, so that we could discover more of what’s possible, see new ways to engage and connect with a deeper sense of meaning.
My life’s work became an inquiry into how we bring the information that exists beneath the surface into view; how we make visible the not yet known but critical information that shapes our sense of the world so we have more agency for how we engage and better understand our place within it.
My PhD explored how people move from being stuck to having a sudden sense of how to proceed when things are complex and there is no clear path forward. Beyond theory, I studied how these shifts occur at a granular and felt level, through our direct experience.
I kept asking: When you feel lost, stuck or at a crossroads in your life, what is happening at the edges of your experience? How much are you perceiving? What allows you to stay with the discomfort long enough to enable a shift to happen?
Whether I’m working with individuals, groups, or organizations, I’m continually drawn to explore how we find our way, and how we stay in connection with a wider horizon of possibility—one that calls us forth to inhabit more of who we are, that expands our capacity and opens us to the unexpected. I help others notice the patterns, relationships, and possibilities that expand their perception and range of response.
Most of my days are spent at the edges—where ideas are just coming into form, where sense is emerging as knowing, where plans meet reality, and where good intentions tangle with culture, politics, speed, and the sheer volume of information many of us face. Rather than relying solely on fixed models, we cultivate ways of seeing and engaging that are alive, attuned, and that adapt the situations we find ourselves in, evolving with us.
Wayfinding, for me, is both art and practice. It’s how we orient when no map is given—learning to sense the invisible architecture of a moment and respond from within it. Drawing from myth, aesthetics, embodied cognition, process-oriented psychology, and systems thinking, I help people interpret their experience and discern their next steps through direct engagement and meaning rather than interpretations that remain at the surface, attempting to control and limit possibilities for learning and action.
The Shoulders I Stand On
I stand on the shoulders of many teachers, elders and guides:
Dr. Charlotte Von Bulow, Dr. Peter Simpson, my PhD supervisors, Christina Nielsen, my mentor and dear friend. Clare Jankelson, a mentor and continual inspiration. My parents Lynne and Robert.
My teachers Salome Schwartz, Dr. Amy and Arnold Mindell and Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes.
The work of scholars such Robert Chia, Tim Ingold, Chellie Spiller, Donna Ladkin, and Joshua Bergamin has also played a significant role in shaping my understanding.
How I Work
My facilitation is spacious and precise. We slow down enough to perceive what’s actually happening, then move.
I draw from phenomenology, process work (process-oriented psychology), 4E cognition, adult development, depth psychology, network practice, and years inside multi-stakeholder, cross-cultural collaborations. The focus of my work isn’t as much about gathering many frameworks as it is about finding an orientation: language, practices, and stances you can use to meet the nuance of the situations you find yourself in and inhabit more of who you are in the process.
Sometimes that looks like guiding a leadership team through a stuck moment until the next true move is visible to everyone. Sometimes it’s with an individual, partnering with them to surface insights and explore ways of engaging with tension, accelerated momentum and transitions, that deepen their work and leave them feeling more resourced. Other times it's with a cohort, learning the capabilities of wayfinding in their personal lives—attentional practices, negative capability (how to be in not-knowing without anxious doing), and the discipline of harvesting and transmuting a variety of experience so it becomes embodied and tacit know-how.
Values
Wakefulness
Resisting numbness, autopilot, or unquestioned conformity
Vitality
Restoring a spark in people and systems so they feel alive rather than drained or constrained.
Being present
Articipating fully rather than going through the motions.
Integration
Ensuring the inner and outer, the intuitive and the structural, inform each other.
Alignment
connecting action to inner knowing and to the reality of the environment
Impact
Creating change that actually fits and adapts with the context instead of importing cookie-cutter solutions.
What You’ll Leave With
A steadier presence in uncertainty, more choices in the moment and faster recovery when you do get knocked out.
A capacity to receive insights from a wider array of sources—to notice subtle cues that help you make decisions, align with choice and participate in your life from a place of integrity. A renewed sense of authorship—not pushing life forward at any cost, but co-creating with it, learning to adapt, respond and recalibrate moment-by-moment.
And often, something quieter: a felt thread. Faith in where you’ve come from and how it informs where you’re going. Enough slack in the system to breathe, sense, and respond.
